“By his own account, Mr Rowley is not a reliable witness, his memory affected by the “Novichok”. It is not unreasonable to conjecture there may also be other reasons why he is vague about where and how he came into possession of this package of perfume.”

Craig Murray — Former UK Embassador

This before-after advertisement for Novichok perfume, featuring Yulia Skripal, was published in May 2018. Then, on July 15 2018, the BBC revealed that the nerve agent that poisoned two people in Amesbury was contained in a perfume bottle.

Amesbury Novichok poisoning victim Charlie Rowley has revealed a sealed box of perfume which he found and later gave to his girlfriend contained the novichok agent which killed her. Rowley does not remember where he found the perfume. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today

Former UK embassador Craig Murray just posted a pretty good analysis of the Novichok Affair. One thing is abundantly obvious. There is not one journalist in the UK investigating this crime. Why on earth not? Too many D-notices?

The mainstream media are making almost no effort today to fit Charlie Rowley’s account of his poisoning into the already ludicrous conspiracy theory being peddled by the government and intelligence agencies.

ITV News gamely inserted the phrase “poisoned by a Russian nerve agent” into their exclusive interview with Charlie Rowley, an interview in which they managed to ask no penetrating questions whatsoever, and of which they only broadcast heavily edited parts. Their own website contains this comment by their journalist Rupert Evelyn:

“He said it was unopened, the box it was in was sealed, and that they had to use a knife in order to cut through it. That raises the question: if it wasn’t used, is this the only Novichok that exists in this city? And was it the same Novichok used to attack Sergei and Yulia Skripal?”

But the information about opening the packet with a knife is not in the linked interview. What Rowley does say in the interview is that the box was still sealed in its cellophane. Presumably it was the cellophane he slit open with a knife.

So how can this fit in to the official government account?

Presumably the claim is that Russian agents secretly visited the Skripal house, sprayed novichok on the door handle from this perfume bottle, and then, at an unknown location, disassembled the nozzle from the bottle (Mr Rowley said he had to insert it), then repackaged and re-cellophaned the bottle prior to simply leaving it to be discovered somewhere – presumably somewhere indoors as it still looked new – by Mr Rowley four months later. However it had not been found by anyone else in the interim four months of police, military and security service search.

Frankly, the case for this being the bottle allegedly used to coat the Skripals’ door handle looks wildly improbable. But then the entire government story already looked wildly improbable anyway – to the extent that I literally do not know a single person, even among my more right wing family and friends, who believes it. The reaction of the media, who had shamelessly been promoting the entirely evidence free “the Russians did it” narrative, to Mr Rowley’s extremely awkward piece of news has been to shove it as far as possible down the news agenda and make no real effort to reconcile it.

By his own account, Mr Rowley is not a reliable witness, his memory affected by the “Novichok”. It is not unreasonable to conjecture there may also be other reasons why he is vague about where and how he came into possession of this package of perfume.

The perfume bottle is now in the hands of the Police. Is it not rather strange that they have not published photos of it, to see if it jogs the memory of a member of the public who saw it somewhere in the last four months, or saw somebody with it?

The “perpetrators” know what it looks like and already know the police have it, so that would not give away any dangerous information. You might believe the lockdown of the story and control of the narrative is more important to the authorities than solving the crime, which we should not forget is now murder.

In an exclusive interview with ITV News, the 45-year-old explained how his partner Dawn Sturgess fell ill moments after spraying the liquid on her wrists.

He said: “Within 15 minutes, I believe Dawn said she felt she had a headache and asked me if I had any headache tablets. I had a look around the flat and within that time she said she felt peculiar and needed to lie down in the bath, which at the time I thought was a bit strange.

“I went into the bathroom and found her in the bath, fully clothed, in a very ill state.”

He told ITV News he had found a sealed box in a cellophane wrapper containing a perfume bottle some days earlier, and had kept it at his Amesbury home, before handing it to his partner of two years as a gift.

He explained how he struggled to remember where he had originally found the item but was convinced it was legitimate, as it looked like it hadn’t been used, “Which made me think it was quite safe,” he said.

The latest development as to how Mr Rowley and Ms Sturgess came into contact with Novichok “raises questions” as to whether Salisbury is now free of the nerve agent, according to ITV News Correspondent Rupert Evelyn.

He said: “We are not privy to a lot of the details that police have as part of the investigation, but what Charlie Rowley said today was interesting in terms of the perfume bottle.

“He said it was unopened, the box it was in was sealed, and that they had to use a knife in order to cut through it.

“That raises the question: if it wasn’t used, is this the only Novichok that exists in this city? And was it the same Novichok used to attack Sergei and Yulia Skripal?”